I drew my bow. The arrow passed through him and split a boulder three miles behind. He smiled. His teeth were horse teeth. “You see me now,” he said. “So I see you forever.”
I was counting my herd by the Khalkh River. The sky turned the color of curdled mare’s milk. He said nothing. But inside my skull, his voice crawled like a centipede: “Give me your youngest son’s shadow. Give me your wife’s dream. Give me the name your mother whispered to the Earth Mother when you were born.” i saw the devil mongol heleer
Listen. Not the wind that whines through the larch. Not the wolf that drags the newborn lamb. I saw the devil. I drew my bow
(Mongol heleer — spirit of the telling) His teeth were horse teeth
So I ride east at midnight. I will find the shaman with nine knots in her belt. I will ask her to cut the devil’s thread from my ribs. But deep in my bones, I know: On the steppe, once you have seen him, you are no longer a man. You are a witness. And the devil — the chotgor — never forgets a witness.
He came from the north, where the permafrost dreams. His horse had no shadow. His coat was the hide of a hundred stillborn foals, stitched with sinew of dead shamans. When he breathed, the khiimori — the soul-horse flag on every ger — tore from its pole and flew backward into the sun’s black eye.